


I've Got You, Brother

by TheOceanIsMyInkwell



Series: I'm Peter, I'm 19 and I Never Learned to Read [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Dysphoria, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gay Harley Keener, Gen, Harley Keener & Peter Parker Friendship, Harley Keener is a Good Bro, Hurt Peter Parker, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Trans Peter Parker, deadnaming, should i be tagging this for 2am phone calls that last 3k words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22646233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOceanIsMyInkwell/pseuds/TheOceanIsMyInkwell
Summary: “Harley?” Peter says. “Harley, what’s wrong with me?”Harley comes to the sudden and blinding realization that Peter is crying. He’s somehow managed to stave off the tears throughout the entire conversation--or at least cover up the sound of them on the phone--up until now, and something about that frightens Harley to a depth he cannot understand.“Don’t,” Harley whispers. “Don’t cry. Please. Don’t cry.”The instant he says it, he hates himself to the barest fiber of his being, because that’s probably the ugliest thing he could say to his brother. And of course the instant he says it and feels it, Peter is all too understanding, all too forgiving, and that drives the loathing harder into the crack between Harley’s ribs.“I’ll be okay,” Peter gets out in little gasps. “I promise, Harls. I’ll be okay. I’m--I’m just having a moment here.”“Shut up, forget what I said. Cry all you want.”--On a bad night when he can't see past the dysphoria, Peter doesn't know who else to call except Harley. Harley may be a little lost and buried by self-loathing, but he'll be damned if he won't show just how much he loves his brother.
Relationships: Harley Keener & Peter Parker
Series: I'm Peter, I'm 19 and I Never Learned to Read [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1394110
Comments: 31
Kudos: 209





	I've Got You, Brother

**Author's Note:**

> Right. So. I know I said this series was going to be light-hearted and crackish.
> 
> Yeahhhh looks like that's not happening.
> 
> I mean honestly? who's even surprised?? it's me, angst goblin king so,,
> 
> This little snapshot was a spur-of-the-moment thing I felt the compulsion to write down since I've been having a lot of profound thinking sessions about my own place in the LGBTQ+ community as a pre-T trans guy. There's just so much more dimension to the trans experience than just the physical transition and the issue of passing, and I thought this might resonate with someone out there experiencing similar thoughts to Peter in this oneshot. Maybe.
> 
> Either way, I do hope you enjoy!
> 
> Theme song and title inspiration: ["Brother" by Kodaline](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6TXPNybrmk)

It’s two in the morning when Harley gets his second actual phone call from Peter in lieu of a text after Peter went back to MIT. Harley starts awake at the blare of the “All Star” instrumental and for a moment he’s lost in a blur of slate gray around him. Then he rolls over and, with a groan, realizes that he’s fallen asleep at an unconventional angle on the couch in Tony’s lab. The man himself is nowhere to be found.

Harley’s sleep-addled brain can’t find enough energy to care or to figure out what Tony is up to now. Instead, he scoops up his phone from the pile of his socks and hoodie on the floor and accepts the call.

He considers saying hello--truly, he does--but no one can blame him if all that comes out is an inhuman grunt.

“Whaddup,” says Peter.

“You sound dumb,” says Harley through half-lidded eyes. “Hey, dummy. What’s up, dummy.”

“Nothing.”

“Okay, cool. I’m hanging up now.”

“Uh...no, you’re not.”

“You’re right,” Harley mumbles. “I’m a sack o’ lazy bones. Imma just stay here and put the phone on my chest and listen to you breathe weirdly.”

“What’s weirder is you being okay with listening to me breathing until, like, Tony’s service cuts out. Which would be never,” Peter points out. “What’re you up to?”

“Hngh,” Harley moans. “I dunno, not being awake.”

“You’re so charming.”

“I know. My thirteen exes would all say the same. All four-point-eight stars on Yelp reviews.” Harley suppresses a yawn and scratches at his hairline.

Peter heaves a knowing sigh on the other end of the line. It sounds halfway like a chuckle of exasperation. “I’ll talk to Charlie sometime, okay?”

Harley gives a lazy roll of his eyes into the dark. “Not interested anymore,” he lies. “I moved on faster than--faster than Jo and Laurie moved on from each other.”

“First of all, _ouch_ ,” Peter whisper-yells into the receiver. “Second, I don’t think you even _read_ the book.”

“Cliffnotes, sixth grade,” Harley quips. “Why’d you call?”

“Uh,” says Peter. “Um.”

Upon hearing the other boy’s exceedingly eloquent answer, Harley creaks into a more upright position and wraps the fleece blanket around his knees and toes. He realizes idly that he’s stopped questioning when and how blankets started randomly appearing on top of him in the weirdest places he’s dozed in Tony’s place. It’s just a fact of life now, living with the man.

“I can name more books that you can, like, diss me for not reading,” Harley offers with a shrug. “I’m feelin’ real generous right now.”

“Uh,” Peter says just as intelligently as before.

Harley barrels on, “But let’s be honest, you could roast me about that over text and it’d probably be twenty times better ’cause you’ve started stealing my arsenal of memes and stickers. So. That’s not the real reason you called.”

“Every day you live with Tony, I begin to understand the fear of God,” Peter says.

“That’s called deflection,” Harley retorts around a yawn. “That’s--that’s--right, Alexa? I’m pretty sure Tony said--oh, wait. Alexa doesn’t live here. FRIDAY?”

“That’s the most chaotic Gryffindor thing I’ve ever heard you say,” says Peter. He is definitely rolling his eyes on the other end.

“Yeah, sure, badger boy,” Harley retorts. “This, coming from the guy who Googled bedtime stories for the criminal after webbin’ him up and waiting for the police to pull up.”

“I hate you,” Peter says in the most blasé tone ever.

“Ditto,” Harley says distractedly. He fishes around in the pocket of his hoodie on the floor for his charger. “Wait--today was first day of class, right? How was it?”

“Sucky,” Peter replies without preamble. “Horrible. No good. Like ass. Like--like--that time those rookie jewelry thieves somehow had _goo_ guns and it got stuck _everywhere_ and I was mostly fine with it because Tony adores me and all and he’d fix anything for me but then I realized Karen’s GPS systems were shot and I couldn’t even use her to get to the nearest Krispy Kreme and get my free donut for their loyalty points program and apparently I’d dropped my phone in a _fire_ that morning and I just, I just started crying. And laughing. But mostly crying because hormones and shit. And Tony said he wasn’t laughing when he came to pick me up but he was so totally laughing.”

There’s a pause. “Tony’s sense of humor leaves something to be desired,” Harley says at last, quite mildly.

“No, it doesn’t, his humor is usually pitch perfect but--wait, _that’s_ what you got out of all this?”

“Oh, I’m well aware of the backstory behind your lil metaphor there,” Harley reminds him. “I was the one that Tony sent out to get Krispy Kreme for you, remember?”

“Tony sent Happy, and Happy sent you, and he gave you enough money to buy Krispy Kreme for the entire Avengers team and, like, Thor’s planet,” Peter says sulkily.

“I’m getting a migraine. I don’t have the lifespan to argue about your version of events,” Harley complains, shrugging on his hoodie with awkward movements and shoving his hand into the pocket. He taps the speaker button on his phone, balances the thing on his knees and props his feet up against the edge of the nearest capiche shell coffee table. Why Pepper even bothers putting aesthetic things in a highly flammable man cave, he’ll never know.

“So,” Harley asks around another yawn, “what’s going on? Why was your day sucky?”

“Lost my meal card,” Peter grouses. “Which isn’t a big deal, I know, Tony’d take care of it, but I can’t get used to that, y’know?”

(Translation: Peter probably had a mini panic attack about it.)

“And then Ned had to transfer out of the lab we have together because seats opened up in the Irish lit class he wanted to take as an elective, and that one conflicted with our lab schedule, which is fine, it’s cool, we have another class together anyway and we live like literally on the same floor in the same dorm and--yeah. You know this already. Anyway, I was looking at the syllabus for Calc II and there are _so many quizzes_. And he’s so boring I could literally stick toothpicks between my eyelids to myself awake and I’d still be, like, drifting in the soul stone or something.” (Harley does not find this bit funny at all.) “Oh, and, yeah. You know how apparently they switched around profs for the engineering management class? Well, uh, I-got-called-Isabel-in-roll-call-today-and-that-was-super-fun.”

Peter lets out his last sentence in a rush of overflowing words and pent-up emotion. Harley takes a minute to register what his brother just said, and then his eyes fly open.

“Dude, why’d you say that?”

“Why’d I say what?”

“You don’t have to say it like that.”

“Say _what_ like _what_.”

“Literally just say you got deadnamed,” Harley says, a bit heatedly, a bit apologetically, hoping the passion in his tone gets read as defensiveness rather than annoyance. He gestures ineffectively in the air. “Literally just say that. You don’t have to say your deadname.”

“But it’s just a name,” Peter says. It’s too loud and too fast and Harley can read past the casual frustration in half a heartbeat.

Harley slaps a hand softly over his face. “It’s not just a name,” he mumbles into his palm.

“It’s literally a name,” Peter insists. “It’s--it’s three syllables. Just a bunch of sounds made by someone’s mouth. I’m really not bothered. I shouldn’t _be_ bothered. Hecking--it’s been six years.”

“Yes, well, it’s been six years of _that_ not being your name,” Harley points out. “Jesus fuckin’--just. Wow. That is so dumb.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter bites out, sounding sullen.

“You’re not dumb, this is dumb,” Harley corrects him.

“No, I’m dumb. Like I said, she didn’t know better. I’ll just send her the email again.”

“Didn’t you already send it?”

“I sent it to the other one, the, the, the guy who was supposed to be the one teaching it in the first place, then I forwarded it to her when I saw the name switch in my schedule. That was like three days ago.”

“So obviously she saw it.”

“I’m not trying to say she did it on purpose,” Peter talks over Harley. Everything about his voice bleeds apology, defensiveness, raw pain in chunks that fall out of his hands as he tries to pick them back up from the floor. Harley can hear it. He wishes--no, he doesn’t wish he could see Peter right now, because more than likely there’s hot moisture streaking down his brother’s face where it doesn’t belong, and Harley would give two lungs and a kidney, probably, just to pull him into a fierce hug right now, but he’s also just eighteen and selfish and he doesn’t want to have to hurt from seeing Peter hurt.

“I’m not saying that,” Harley says after a beat, finally modulating his voice. “You’re the least malicious person I’ve ever met, Pete. Hufflepuff, remember?”

There’s a sniffle on the other end that Peter most definitely did not want Harley to hear. Dutifully, Harley ignores it. Still, his fist curls into a ball on his knee.

“So send her the email again, I guess,” Harley says slowly. “Though the fact that she must have seen it and still chosen to call you-- _that_ \--instead of Peter...yeah, there’s not a whole lot of fucking nice ways to read the situation. I’m sorry. If I was there, you know I’d’ve just ripped her a whole new one.”

Peter chuckles. The sound is wet and crackly over the phone. “Engineering management? More like anger management.”

Harley rubs his hand over his eyes. “Please don’t do that. Don’t. You’re embarrassing yourself. You can’t do the meme voice, I’ve told you a thousand times--”

“--I’m not doing the meme voice!”

“I can hear it in your tone! Oh my _God_.”

“You’re just jealous because I’ve got range.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Harley snaps at him over a giggle.

“Yeah, I can do treble _and_ bass, thanks to my old buddy T,” Peter snickers.

“That’s not how hormones work,” Harley groans, still suppressing a torrent of laughs. His stomach hurts.

“Oh, yeah? Get on my level and get your own dysphoria, lion boy.”

“I am personally taking Happy’s jet tomorrow and flying over there to harass you and tell everyone your secrets.”

“Oh, no,” Peter warbles. “Oh, dear. I’m a lame cosplaying nerd who makes silly string rope. I’m quaking in my spandex.”

“Everything you just said was a better roast on you than anythin’ else I could’ve come up with,” Harley says. “Fuckin’ A, we’re a disaster. Seriously, though. Whose butt do I need to kick tomorrow?”

“Nobody’s,” Peter stresses. “I’m sending her the email again tomorrow. I’ll wait till, like, eight o’clock or something so it doesn’t look like I’m haunted.”

Harley surprises himself with the gigantic snort that rips out of him. “Stop torturin’ yourself and just send the email now.”

Peter mutters something unintelligible.

Harley rolls his eyes at the ceiling. “What? You’re the one with the freaky spider ears, not me. What did you say?”

“I said I don’t wanna look desperate.”

At that, Harley pinches the bridge of his nose. “Look. Listen. Just--look. Nothing about this is you looking ‘haunted’ or ‘desperate’ or whatever dumb synonyms you’re already looking up. Your name is Peter, you _are_ Peter, she is an educator hired by a reputable institution so one would think she has the decency to respect that you are Peter. End of story. If she doesn’t respond to the second email, then in my book she’s lost her chance to take care of this in private and I officially give you Harley Keener’s permission to go off on her in class next time she does it again.”

“Um,” Peter mumbles. “About that.”

“Or I can do it,” Harley offers without missing a beat. “I can bring Tony for backup, too. I know he’d lose his shit at any excuse to come see you, anyway.”

“Nope. No,” says Peter. “There will be no going off or dragging Tony along for backup. I’m--I’m backup.”

“Pretty sure Tony said you’re a stowaway,” Harley comments with a squint at the ceiling. “What’s stopping you?”

He’s met with silence. After a few seconds, Peter says in a small voice, “You know what.”

“Uh, actually, no, I don’t,” Harley says honestly. “Sorry, but you’re gonna have to spell it out for me. I know we’re--I know we’re close and all and we finish each other’s sentences ’n’ shit, but this is something that is uniquely your experience and not...mine. I mean, I’ve done my research, but. It would do you good to probably say it. I dunno. Maybe I’m being insensitive. Whatever. Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

“No, no, _not_ whatever,” Peter hastens to reassure him. “It’s--good that you told me that. ’Cause, um, I have trouble talking about this? And you know that, but also, like, you’re the person I feel safest around talking about this and I don’t know why that is but...yeah. That’s why I called you.”

Harley refuses to acknowledge the way a corner of his heart melts at hearing that mere admission from his brother. Instead, he says gruffly, “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Pete repeats softly. “Yeah.”

Something in the tone of the other boy’s voice, the roundness of his syllables and the sad little drag of his vowels, moves Harley to slip his feet off the coffee table to tuck his knees under his chin and wrap an arm around them. He takes the phone off speaker and cradles it between his cheek and his collarbone.

In an instant, the sound of his brother’s breathing turns intimate, hesitant, in the closeness of the audio against Harley’s ear.

“So talk to me about it,” Harley speaks up in a voice just as low. “Or try to.”

He closes his eyes as he says it, because keeping them open and being aware of the buzz and pulse of the lab in New York hundreds of miles away from Peter will only remind him of all the times and ways he can’t be there for him.

Peter just breathes in response: a deliberate inhale, an accidental exhale, the sure sign he was about to say something but got choked off by fear or indecision or both.

“I’m not good with words,” he admits after a minute. “I just feel like I should be better than this?”

Harley withholds his reaction in favor of prodding. “Better than what?”

“Being bothered by stuff like that,” Peter says. “Being deadnamed. Being misgendered--but like, that never happens anymore so this really threw me. And I didn’t have any issues with the profs last semester, and most of them this spring, so it’s just…”

Harley waits. He gnaws at the hangnail on his thumb.

Peter finally settles on: “It’s weird. I’ve...I’ve never forgotten that I’m trans, but I just got so used to passing that it almost sort of moved to the back of my mind? Like obviously I still joke about it but it’s not even in a ‘haha, I feel really bad about my dysphoria so I’m gonna make a joke about it to cope with it’ kind of way. It’s just actual jokes now. It’s almost like I started getting really used to living as a cis guy. Or as close to a cis guy as I could. But then I got thinking of how...remember that first picnic with the Rainbow Lounge kids? How I couldn’t even say I was trans? Like--what’s wrong with me? I was literally in a safe space, and you and Ned were there, and there was not--I just. I vividly remember Ned saying he was gay, and you saying the same, and you looking at me and then me looking at Chris, and everyone just sorta assumed I was ‘gay’ too, but gay in a cis kind of way, and probably nobody noticed and I’m making a huge deal out of this but then after today--after I got so _bothered_ by a fucking six-letter name by some lady I don’t even know--I don’t. I don’t know. What’s wrong with me?”

Harley bites down so hard on his hangnail that he misses completely and buries his teeth in his bottom lip instead.

“Harley?” Peter says. “Harley, what’s wrong with me?”

Harley comes to the sudden and blinding realization that Peter is crying. He’s somehow managed to stave off the tears throughout the entire conversation--or at least cover up the sound of them on the phone--up until now, and something about that frightens Harley to a depth he cannot understand.

“Don’t,” Harley whispers. “Don’t cry. Please. Don’t cry.”

The instant he says it, he hates himself to the barest fiber of his being, because that’s probably the fucking ugliest thing he could say to his brother. And of course the instant he says it and feels it, Peter is all too understanding, all too forgiving, and that drives the loathing harder into the crack between Harley’s ribs.

“I’ll be okay,” Peter gets out in little gasps. “I promise, Harls. I’ll be okay. I’m--I’m just having a moment here.”

“Shut up, forget what I said. Cry all you want,” Harley says hastily. “Fuck me. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No, I know. I know you, Harls. You meant the best.”

Now Peter’s hiccuping, and if Harley could crawl into a hole and physically bury himself six feet under with a shovel, he would.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Harley says through his teeth. “Nothing. You hear me? Nothing.”

“But why won’t it stop?”

Harley sucks in a quiet breath. “The dysphoria?”

“No, the--the feeling like I’m disgusted with myself. For not being proud of who I am.”

“Jesus Christ,” Harley chokes out. And now it feels like he’s the one who’s on the verge of tears. He can tell by the burn in the bridge of his nose and he resents it. “Jesus, Pete. The whole point of transitioning for you was _to_ pass. You don’t get to hate yourself for passing so well that you don’t feel like outing yourself every day.”

Peter hiccups again. “I didn’t have to be stealth at the picnic.”

“No, probably not, but you just didn’t feel like saying it,” says Harley. “Sometimes it’s just that simple. Don’t you think? Sometimes there’s no...no psychological bullshit lurking behind everything you do. Sometimes it just _is_.”

Peter seems to think about that for a moment.

“And your professor? Honestly, I’ve never met the woman and I have no interest to because fuck her. I don’t care what her beliefs are, ’cause when she did that she fucking took away your right to come out. It’s your choice to say it or not. She made that choice for you.”

“But I don’t see why I’m getting triggered by it,” Peter says slowly, sadly.

“Pete, can I tell you something? And listen. Really listen. Don’t just hear me say it, think it sounds nice and then assume it doesn’t apply to you. Because I know you’re all about that shit. You--you are allowed to be triggered by this. What the hell. I can’t believe I’m saying this to you. Your deadname is a trigger to you, and you’re harming yourself by sitting there and insisting that it’s not, and you’re harming yourself by saying your name aloud yourself when you know what it does for you. If you’re trying to prove something to yourself, that you’re, what? Able to pass some bullshit test of how much you’ve ‘grown’ since you transitioned? Yeah, no. I’m not gonna sit by here and listen to my best friend hurt himself this way.”

Peter swallows audibly. There’s a rustle as he wipes something--likely the sleeve of his own hoodie--over his nose, mopping up the tears and snot from his face.

“Sorry,” he tells Harley after a gulp.

“It’s okay,” says the other boy.

“I want to grow, though,” Peter mumbles. “God, I just...I want to be _there_ already, y’know? I want to be able to live and not be bothered by this.”

“Maybe you will, maybe you won’t,” Harley says pragmatically. “That doesn’t mean you get to beat yourself down for not ‘being there yet.’ I won’t allow it. I won’t.” His voice goes up a notch, and he’s surprised even at himself by how fierce he sounds.

It seems that Peter is surprised, too, if the tiny silence that ensues is anything to go by. The line crackles and rattles in time with the beat of emotion caught in both their chests.

Harley closes his eyes again. “Just think about tomorrow,” he breathes out. “Tomorrow, and--tomorrow and the next day after that, when you’ve gone to bed. Not next year or next decade. Just tomorrow.”

“First Hamlet, now Macbeth.”

The corners of Harley’s mouth turn up despite himself. “Shut up.”

“Shouldn’t’ve told you to get into theater. This is a disaster.”

“Literally _shut up_.”

“I wish you were here,” Peter whines in the same breath.

“Yeah, same.”

“What, so you could make fun of my choice in Starburst flavors?”

“No,” Harley draws out like Pete’s an idiot, “so I can give you pep talks _and_ make fun of your choice in Starburst flavors.”

“I feel like this is the part where you’re waiting for me to say ‘fuck you’ but I’m not gonna do it.”

“Suit yourself, Hufflepuff boy.”

“Feels like us dragging each other is a defense mechanism for something,” Peter muses.

“Wonder where we got that from,” Harley drawls. He tips on his side so he’s lying on the opposite end of the couch now with the worn throw pillow between his arms.

“I love you,” Peter says chirpily, if a little unsteadily.

“I love you more.”

“This isn’t a competition, Harls.”

“I do love you more. Don’t you be rollin’ your eyes at me.”

“I love you most.”

“That’s grammatically incorrect. Go back to college.”

“I am and I will,” Peter says petulantly. “I’m going to bed soon, actually. And I just--um.”

Harley snuggles his head deeper into the recesses of his hoodie. “What.”

“Thanks, Harls.”

“Go to bed, Pete.”

“Get off the couch and go to bed properly.”

Harley’s right eye snaps open. How in the--? Right. Stupid superhero hearing.

“I hate you,” he says decisively.

Peter’s laugh tinkles on the other end of the line then, and Harley melts a little bit more all over again, because he put that there. He made Peter sound like that. He put that tiny smile on Peter’s face, hundreds of miles away in the middle of a stinky dorm room surrounded by fatigue and insecurity.

And maybe in that moment, Harley starts to learn what the first step of forgiving himself a little feels like.

**Author's Note:**

> I know the Peter Parker + Harley Keener friendship is a bit more of a niche fandom under the Iron Fam umbrella but once I started writing it I just couldn't get enough of it. There's just something about Harley's rough edges and fierce way of loving that vibes so well with Pete when he's softer and more vulnerable. *slams fists on table* _Let my boys be best friends and bros in canon you cowards_
> 
> (also shoutout to floweryfran for being the inbox i can scream into when i'm feeling things about these two boys) (u the real mvp)
> 
> On a more serious note, I hope this makes a positive impact on somebody out there who needs to hear whatever was said in this fic about the trans existence. There's no right way or wrong way to pass or not pass. There's no wrong way to react to being deadnamed by people who know better. At the same time, there's so many of us out there, more than anyone probably thinks, and we're here to support each other. I'm sending y'all my love and best vibes for this week, this month and this entire year <3 ilysm <333 -kaleb


End file.
